The lower house of the Russian Parliament, the State Duma, has rejected a proposal by the liberal Yabloko faction to stop state funding for Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square.

A Yabloko spokesman said state funds were more urgently needed elsewhere.

But the majority of Duma representatives opposedputting the proposal on the agenda.

Lenin's body has been preserved in the mausoleum since his death in 1924, but correspondents say the reburial earlier this year of the remains of the Russian royal family, has led to renewed calls for him to be buried.

The Duma also debated the fate of the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, which was removed in 1991.

The Communists want the statue re-erected, but the liberals are proposing a monument for the victims of the secret police on the square where it stood.